Alex Ferguson opens new Fleetwood Town training ground

Alex Ferguson has opened Fleetwood Town’s new training ground, which the former Manchester United manager says has features he wishes he had introduced at Carrington.

The League One club have spent £8million on the Poolfoot Farm facility and Ferguson was on hand to officially open the new training ground on Wednesday.

Poolfoot Farm has a dozen grass training pitches, as well as a restaurant, a gym, a fitness studio and meeting rooms, with one design feature at the site particularly impressing Ferguson.

“One part I wish I’d done at United was that the gym is one floor up and you can see into the training ground,” Ferguson said.

“Three years after we’d built Carrington I went over to Barcelona and realised we’d made a mistake. Our gym at Carrington is enclosed.

“Looking out at the training ground makes the players hungry to get out there. So when a player is coming back from injury, he can see the pitches, it’s an incentive to get out there.

“So there are things I wish I’d thought about when Carrington was built that I see here.

“I’m surprised at this facility. I honestly didn’t realise the extent of it. I thought I was coming to open a small academy suited to a small club. But you see the magnitude of it and you realise the ambition here. That’s fantastic.”

Fleetwood Town are currently 19th in League One under Ferguson’s fellow Scot Steven Pressley, two points above the division’s relegation zone.

“[Ferguson] was genuinely wowed,” added the club’s chairman Andy Pilley. “He said he knew the facility would be very good – he knows we like to do things properly.

“But he said he did not expect a facility of this standard. He was genuinely taken aback by the facilities we’ve got.

“He offered us some very good advice, some of that we’ll take in and we’ll look to take it into the complex as we further develop it.”